15 year old “dropped” by friends

[Schoolworriesagainandagain]

Not sure what I can do if anything but grateful for advice.

My 15 year old dd had some vile messages from 2 school friends saying they are “dropping her”. She showed me the message it was awful. No reason given. In fact DD just back from a school trip with one of the girls. DD said they had a great time.

These 2 girls are DDs only real friends at school. She is a shy girl and has struggled to make friends at secondary school. I’ve always been a bit worried as these 2 girls have been best friends since primary school and socialise with each others parents - they’re related.

DD never saw them outside of school as they spent all their time with each other and their families however in school they spent lunch and break together.

I have no idea how DD will cope back in school next week without them. They are in her form and lots of lessons and DD said she knows they’re going to be awful to her.

They have reposted horrible videos on TikTok aimed at DD stuff like “when you get rid of that fking b*tch from your friendship group”.

DD hasn’t stopped crying and is so worried about being alone at school. I did email the school asking what support they could provide and they were useless said it “will pass” and the school is full of “lovely girls”. I was hoping for more.

I have told her when she goes back to school to join clubs to make friends, to go to the library at lunch time and to try and make new friends. DD said it’s too late, everyone has their friendship group now & she’s going to be a loner forever. I’m worried she’s right.

Back to school.
Tell them about tik tok is there pastoral help.
Has your dd done anything even unawares to upset them ?
Your DD needs suppport and some one to check on with at school.

I did email the school again not heard back. It’s a grammar school with the emphasis on results and very little pastoral care.

I regret sending DD but now she’s doing her GCSEs too late to change schools.

This happened to me when I was 15. It was tough but I made some lovely friends and I finished school with a much nicer group than when I was younger. Not much help for your daughter in the moment but I wanted to add that in the long term it could be a positive change for her.

edited to add: please tell her to ignore them and certainly not to chase after their friendship. Mutual ignoring is the best and easiest option.

Yes, what is their bullying policy? How are they planning to implement it?

Happened to my DD at this age. She had no choice but to make new friends. She got involved with guides and joined a drama group. It’s horrible op but this is actually very common among teenage girls. Just be a shoulder to cry on , encourage her to keep busy and try new things. It will get better eventually.

Your daughter must have a head of year? There must be someone who works in a pastoral role? Have you saved the evidence, because I would arrange a meeting and show them these awful videos, messages etc. These girls need a firm speaking to. Enough to worry them.

This is bullying and it’s unacceptable. It is not your DD’s fault this is happening. School have a responsibility to keep her safe and to look after her so their response is wholly inappropriate.

Please go to the Childline website with your DD and look at the bullying pages and the pages on building self esteem and making new friends. Also consider her speaking to Childline and posting on the site for peer support. She really isn’t alone, but these situations are horrible for kids like her.

She’s definitely not alone. I had two girls in girls only grammar school. The same happened to them. If she’s going into exam year, just try to make sure you keep her really busy when she’s not studying ( a grammar will pile it on!). I pretended to be busy so they had to walk the dog, help with cooking etc…. I’d pretend to be interested in the latest teenage movies, and try to go to the cinema with them so they didn’t miss out. I also said no phones upstairs ( they’re in their 20s now, and agree it was the right thing). Stock up the freezer or treat cupboard with her favourite ice creams etc… and bring them out more often than you think you want to.
And honestly look at different sixth forms. I moved both my dds to the local comprehensive for A levels. They both lived every minute of their two years there, made some lovely friends. They don’t see their grammar school friends anymore, but definitely don’t miss them

@user946372 me too! I had the same experience. And my grammar school also not interested in bullying or pastoral care.

To be honest I’d suspected for ages that my friends were going to drop me - they tormented me for years and when another group of girls in my class “culled” one their supposed friends that set the precedent. I was dumped very cruelly the day before my 15th birthday in the loos at breaktime.

OP, I’ll be honest this situation can be dreadful - I was ostracised immediately as a “social untouchable” because I’d been judged not cool enough for my friends. So no one else wanted me. I was humiliated and had no idea what to do. My mum let me take a day off school and said “never mind you can find new friends” and I didn’t want her to worry so I never told her how much worse my life was from that point on.

I was lucky I had friends outside school through a hobby, and one of those friends let me hang out with her in school - eventually that led to me finding a new small social group in school but most of the girls in my entire year were utterly horrible or totally ignored me. A few clear pitied me but wouldn’t talk to me as that would risk becoming a social pariah too. I ended up having suicidal thoughts and my MH was wrecked for years. I was trapped every day walking into a place where no one saw how utterly miserable I was, or saw and didn’t care, or at worst saw and enjoyed making me feel dreadful.

You are right to be worried and I wish an adult had stepped in to help me. All I needed was a quiet place to go during break and lunch so I didn’t have to be constantly confronted by the public shame of being totally friendless. I joined the school choir but my school offered very little at lunchtime, and no places you could legitimately hide. I used to pretend I had “somewhere to be” so I would walk purposefully from one part of the school to another to kill time, spent a lot of time blagging my way into the buildings so I could go to the toilet, and I always arrived for classes a minute late so I never had to queue whilst everyone else was chatting happily.

It was simply awful. Make sure your dd knows she can take time off if she needs it, it’s a terrible thing to go through.

Download the TikTok’s so you have evidence. Go back to the school and ask for the bullying policy. Also ask for her to be moved forms as these girls will poison any chance of forming new friendships in the immediate group - your daughter stands more chance if she’s in a different group altogether.

if bullying occurs, ask for meeting with the school. How will they handle it? How will they safeguard your child?

Then get her involved in more outside school. It’ll boost her confidence when she has non school friends.

Remember it is still school holidays so give school time to address this when they are back next term. Often staff are in the day before the students go back so maybe try calling then.

@Superhansrantowindsor it might get better but the emotional damage might be enormous and cast a long shadow. Depending how isolated OP’s dd becomes, it could lead to depression and even suicidal thoughts. The added horror of online bullying is another knife in an already deep wound.

If the school has a culture of ignoring and minimising this sort of thing (which sounds likely) then I think this poor young girl is in a very vulnerable situation.

The library was a good place to go for my DC so agree with you there OP if that’s possible. Can she be a librarian if that’s a thing? One of my DC’s friends just bought librarian badge online so they could spend a lot of time there but that wouldn’t work in a smaller school where the librarians were known, and might not be needed if they have unrestricted access anyway. Hope she finds a way to get through the year. They are getting older as they head into GCSE year so the vibe might be generally a bit kinder among other girls.

Police, surely??

This happened to my daughter but once she told us what had happened it also transpired that they had been making vile comments and ignoring her a while. It all came to a head when she broke down and refused to attend school. School were completely useless and we had to remove her and she went to a small private school instead, She has been very happy there and has lovely friends. It was huge change but worth it for her. I hope that your school can start to be more supportive.

Does she have a hobby which doesn’t involve these two horrors? Are there revision sessions she could attend/lunchtime clubs? A sympathetic form tutor/librarian?

Im so sorry your dd is going through this. As a parent I know it’s heartbreaking to watch.

it’s great that she told you. She’s done nothing wrong. Sometimes friendships evolve, and as hard as it is you just have to accept that. However them being vile and bullying her is totally unacceptable.
Let the school get back next week and see what they can offer. They should be implementing the anti bullying policy. Save everything she’s been sent.

im sure she will find new friends, and they will be better for her as she’s older and wiser now.

How utterly shitty of them.

I agree with the advice above about not trying to chase them or get back the friendship. And the advice about joining clubs in and out of school. Both to keep busy and to potentially find other friends or at least feel like she has seen some people outside lessons.

Is she staying at the school for sixth form? Things tend to broaden out friendship wise in sixth form with leavers and joiners and the classes all changing, so hopefully even if she has a crappy year there is a fresh start then.

This is absolutely heartbreaking to read, your poor daughter. I mean she might make a new friendship group but like she says and like @WifeOfAGemini’s experience (which is also completely heartbreaking - how can girls be so cruel??) it is very much a gamble as to whether it will work with only a year left of school.

At 15 I would be doing everything possible to pull her from school and allow her to online homeschool for the final year. Personally it would be too much of a roulette for her mental health moving forward to send her back to the school, and could very well take her years to get over the damage if things go wrong.

If you have funds then hire subject-specific tutors for the final couple of months before exams - I went from a predicted C grade to As in science after 6 after school biology tutoring sessions. It’s amazing how little time you need to learn the syllabus once the inefficiencies of school life are taken out of the equation.

lots of home schooling families out there these days, and also new friendships can be sought out at clubs which are a neutral ground away from school.

good luck to both you and your lovely daughter x

Another alternative could be to find a different school that has a 6th form. So she can start afresh and do Y11, 12 and 13 at a new school. I know it might sound wierd but my Catholic school didn’t have any of this shitty behaviour in it, maybe look for a faith school as they are big on pastoral care

My two are at grammar school and have struggled terribly with friendship groups over the years with both of them (years 10 and 9 next week) having single friends, groups of friends, no friends. My youngest started acting up and showing off to try and get in with the in crowd. This phase will pass it does seem grammar schools in particular single sec schools do have this recurring problem.

I am by no means suggesting your dd was the cause of any of this but have you checked her phone and social media? I was none the wiser to the absolute dick of herself my youngest had been and had probably caused some of the behaviour towards her.

Ive encouraged extra curricular clubs etc so their friendship groups are varied which has helped lots. Teenage girls are an entirely different breed to when I was at girls grammar school.

Same for me too. I used to brazen it out during lessons & mutually ignore & then would hide in the toilet every lunchtime.

It has made me very mentally resilient - they did me a favour really & I found my true friends at uni.

Good luck to your DD Op as it’s horrible.

The same thing happened to me at that age too. Another group of girls saw me on my own asked what happened and then just adopted me into their group of friends.
It can feel like the end of the world at this age, but it doesn’t have to be.

This also happened to my DD aged 15 at a girls-only grammar school. It was really tough for her and for me feeling I couldn’t help. Teachers tried their best but couldn’t help much. The good thing was that it opened her eyes to how nasty her friends were (I thought they were a nasty bunch of bullies from the moment she fell in with them but she just couldn’t see it). She did find a new group of friends in the end and she’s very happy now.

Please do not be afraid to move your child to a different school. Very simialar situation happened with my son and we struggled through year 11. He had no friends. It was awful. I should have removed him, it has taken 12 months to re build his confidence and still damaged by school. I would look at options.